This is despite initially being the second worst affected country, behind China, at the beginning of the outbreak. It has carried out 486,003 tests.

This compares to the UK – population 66 million – which has been under lockdown for more than two weeks and now has a death toll of 7,097. There are 60,733 confirmed cases, with 232,708 tests carried out.

Dr Youngmi Kim, an expert in Korean public policy from the University of Edinburgh, said it was the South Korean government’s speed at the beginning of the outbreak that made the key difference.

She told Yahoo News UK last week: “They traced all these patients who got positive tests: where they visited and who they met. If they had visited supermarkets, shops or libraries, they closed those venues for two weeks and sanitised them.

“Also, they investigated all those people they had contacted and they had the same testing procedure.”

Another reason South Korea has been able to avoid lockdown is a special mobile phone app which pings when there is a coronavirus patient nearby: something which raises obvious civil liberty issues.